The VP appears pretty popular in the Villages.
The Villages is a 55-plus retirement community located in Sumter County, Florida that has not voted for a Democratic candidate in a general election since 2000. In 2020, Donald Trump won 67.8% of the vote compared to Joe Biden’s 31.7% in the county. In 2016, Trump won 68.8% to Hillary Clinton’s 29.5%. In 2008 and 2012, when Barack Obama carried the state, 63% of ballot castors in Sumter voted for John McCain and 67.2% for Mitt Romney, respectively. In other words, it’s an extreme Republican-stronghold—which makes new enthusiasm for Kamala Harris there not great news for Trump!
Over the weekend, hundreds of golf carts paraded around the Villages in support of Harris’s candidacy, reportedly creating a traffic jam as they showed their excitement for the VP. “Young people are energized and so are we,” resident Joyce Wiegand told Villages-News. Said her friend Karen Wink: “Kamala isn’t just for young people, she’s for all of us. She supports Social Security, Medicare and health care. That matters to us.”
I’ve visited in-laws there a couple of times and the support for Trump is insane. There’s a PA system in one of the squares and they’ll just broadcast Fox News shows over it.
And if you’ve never seen it or been there, The Villages is HUGE and is made up of several very large “neighborhoods” and is for the most part self contained with restaurants, hotels, bars, shops, movie theaters, etc.